Mark Mazower versus Orhan Pamuk
Like many, I read the article of Turkey’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature with great interest. And like many, I am sure, I was overwhelmed by Orhan Pamuk’s melancholy and fatalism over the future prospects of Turkey becoming a member of the European Union. He laments the loss of passion nowadays, both in Turkey and in Europe, on whether Turkey should be accepted in the European family and cites as the biggest reason for the waning of interest over Turkey’s possible future membership as “the large influx of Muslim migrants from North Africa and Asia that, in the eyes of many Europeans, has cast a dark shadow and fear over the idea of a predominantly Muslim country – like Turkey – joining the union.” So, if I understand it well, it is the fear of Islam that has pushed Europe to “put up walls at its borders and to gradually turn away from the world,” distancing itself from its own values of freedoms, equality and fraternity turning gradually to a conservative land of religious and ethnic identities. Is it really so?
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